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Managing Director
Aon
New York

Donna Pfluger-Murray is part of the Aon team servicing one of the biggest names in hotels. Her role is as consultant for insurance requirements for the Asia Pacific Region.

The client's global risk executive commended Pfluger-Murray's bigger and bigger role on his account. He said she not only connects his team with the respective Aon offices in each country in which they're conducting business but helps him navigate local resources and manage relationships with the local owners, especially in their moments of "push back."

After all is said and done, Pfluger-Murray also places the liability coverages at these overseas locations.

As managing director of the Aon Global Client Network, she also developed an insurance availability matrix so that insurance requirements in her client's contract mesh with the coverage available in all of the countries in its expansion sights. Come contract review time with the client and its property owners and developers, she and her team were there for insurance availability questions and contract redrafting.

This can be a Himalayan-like climb in a part of the world where earthquake, terrorism and tsunami risk can lead to expensive coverage requirements that property owners can curse in languages you don't understand.

In one case, she delivered an agreement over CAT cover so that the client's hotel could open on time in Japan. The client CEO was there to make sure.

Senior Vice President
Food & Beverage Practice Leader
Willis
Nashville, Tenn.

Said one Benefield client, a risk manager of a restaurant chain: "He always says, 'You are my most important client.' " And then he makes her believe it with his "uncompromising service." He stands out because he really understands the culture of her company and works to make a program fit within it, striving to "make risk management look good."

Such commitment landed him the account for a food transportation company. The company president recounted how they'd never experienced anything like the education, attention to detail or professionalism that Benefield delivered. And after their first placement with him, "We've been back-flipping and overjoyed," said the president.

Yet Benefield isn't on this page just for landing good prices in a softening market. He's one of the top brokers for restaurants because he tackles whatever comes his way. For instance, another client, a senior executive at one well-known entertainment-based restaurant, reported how, two months before directors' and officers' renewal, her company faced scrutiny over backdating issues. "A lot of people would have panicked," she said.

Benefield didn't. He got extensions for her current policy and then reduced premiums at renewal. Or take his work done for another client. First, Benefield did the research on how they could nonsubscribe for workers' comp in Texas. After a couple years and a big claim, the director of risk management said, her company asked Benefield to re-evaluate the situation late 2007. Benefield didn't blink.

Executive Vice President
Strategic Account Management
Aon
Chicago

Few brokers, if any, can touch Green's reputation. She gives frequent seminars at American Hospitality & Lodging Association meetings. She feels the "pulse" of the industry and possesses the "best set of ears around," as the head of a resort purchasing group explained. But knowledge and public speaking aren't enough to get on this list.

Power Broker^TM winners, after all, tend to get dirty in the trenches. And Green's upper-echelon position at Aon could be an excuse for her to stay back in the tents with the other generals.

Not so with Green. She is more than willing to still get knee-deep in contract details when called upon by a client, reported the risk manager for one of the world's largest hotel chains.

This past year, Green offered the risk manager of a well-known, high-end hotel chain the services of Aon's crisis management group out of London to train her staff in security and counterterrorism. Then later, upon request, Green researched occupational injuries for the firm's expatriates, uncovering and then filling in coverage gaps.

"She's thinking all the time of her resources and how they can be applied," said the risk manager.

Another risk manager at a hotel company recounted last year's huge RFP process. The company's previous program with Aon had been a "mish-mash," and she looked at many other good brokers with the possibility of leaving. But then Green came aboard and clinched this risk manager's account.

Senior Vice President
Marsh
Los Angeles

Braun won the 2007 Marsh Chairman's Award because of his growing importance as a property resource in the broker's global network and his dedication to being a collaborative team player on major accounts.

For one of those mega-accounts, a global hotel company, Braun was the "engineer" behind a reformation of its program that declawed CAT concerns, said the risk management director.

Braun helped to pull off the finished product, said the client, with the technical expertise needed when it came to fronting elements, captive work and local policies in more than 70 countries. Braun even came up with a "flowchart"--"something truly novel"--that still "blows" the client's mind. The end result is so successful that the risk manager's boss wants no public mention of the generalities, let alone details.

Said this boss: "(Braun) beats anybody I've seen."

On another colossal hotel account, Braun recently helped to set up the same innovative property placement. Said the risk manager, Braun worked the fronting arrangement while fellow broker Mike Hudson built the reinsurance towers behind it.

But Braun doesn't work tirelessly just for the big names. One client, at a "good-sized" real-estate services company, couldn't stop explaining about how well he handled her challenging renewal, his moment's notice delivery of an evaluation on a hotel expansion, his tireless customer service.

"He's never satisfied with what worked yesterday," said the operations executive.

Executive Vice President
Lockton
Dallas

Levene's been a big Power Broker^TM hit, winning three awards between 2006 and 2007 for gaming and telecom. But he's been a hit with the restaurant industry since he started working in the business at the age of 15. So maybe it's about time he won for his work with restaurants too.

Restaurant risk managers agreed. Out of the top brokers for this sector, he's tops when it comes to his practice, creativity and client service, said the head of global risk for one of the world's largest fast-food chains.

A director of claims and safety put it another way. "He owns the business," he said. "We couldn't live without (Levene's) group."

He's indispensable, simply put, because he solves problems. Take the area of reputational risk. He's provided customized brand protection for large clients that pays out even when a catastrophe causes brand and income loss. One risk manager mentioned how Levene fashioned such brand protection for her company, taking into account how each of her company's franchises would have to buy into the coverage.

As you might expect from a Lockton broker, customer service is a theme in praise for Levene. As one restaurant risk manager said, Levene and his team provide a "night-and-day difference" than what any other large broker has offered.

Levene's the broker people stick with for years. When one client narrowed down her flock of brokers from many to two in 2006, and then to one in 2007, that last one standing was Levene and his Lockton team.

Area Vice President
Arthur J. Gallagher
Houston

Maybe Brandt just knows how to fill out a Power Broker application. But it seems to us, from speaking to those who've worked with him, he plain deserves to win second year running.

Brandt is a determined advocate for the big and small in the hotel industry, even for those who don't pay him. Take the story of a small Florida hotel owner whose previous broker screwed up his 2004 hurricane claim so bad the fellow got nothing from his insurer.

"Wes liked him and knew he had a problem," said an acquaintance of Brandt regarding the hotel owner.

Brandt reopened the claim and got the carrier to pay the loss in full and then some. Again, Brandt did all this without getting paid, said the acquaintance. Imagine what he does for paying clients.

"He's just dogged in watching out for the interests of his clients," explained the head of an industry purchasing group.

This could involve closing 2005 hurricane claims "like a dog with a bone," said one resort president who needed just that. It could be protecting clients from future losses by forming unique contracts with a national remediation company so that disputes between it and insurers never reach the ears of his clients. "We have an incredible contract in place," said one client.

Or it could be reclassifying a client's flood exposure by wielding FEMA mapping and classification laws, dropping the current premium by 92 percent and recouping about $1 million in premium from the previous two years.